Photo courtesy Jeff Winkowski
Jeff Winkowski
Jeff Winkowski
Jeff Winkowski cut a special figure on Milwaukee’s hardcore scene in the ‘80s and ‘90s. With humility and sense of purpose, he saw the music as a model for community and human values. He occasionally played in bands, but his main role was as an advocate through zine writing (Milk, Flipside) and organizing shows. “Hardcore never needed a friend, but it’s important that music news outlets recognize it as an art form,” Winkowski says. The Violent Femmes’ tribute album he produced, What Do We Have to Do?, featured Milwaukee bands giving surprising interpretations of Gordon Gano songs.
Winkowski will give a talk at the East Side Public Library, “How to be a Friend During the Fight of Your Life: The Bhagavad Gita and Freedom from Anxiety,” at 10 p.m. Saturday, July 8. The talk will also be the launch for his newest booklet, Back to Mono: TOYL Volume 2.
“I’m nonbinary in terms of my religious identity,” Winkowski says. “I practice Bhakti Yoga which is really a way of doing a mantra and doing life daily versus just saying ‘I am this or I am that.’ The themes I will be exploring with the audience on Saturday are friendship as a spiritual practice and freedom from anxiety.”
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Back to Mono is a scrapbook with posters of shows he promoted as well as memories. It opens with his account of the Y2K anxiety—the fear that all the world’s computers would crash at midnight 2000. “For me, Y2K was the first mass hysteria in the U.S. It set the tone for the 21st century,” he explains. “Every type of panic we had about terrorism, pandemics and changes in social norms has similarly been rooted in what-if scenarios. Panic kills everyone. We can alleviate the anxiety that leads to panic through music and a spiritual discipline.
Friendship and Hindu spirituality? “I believe that we need to reevaluate what we mean when we say ‘friend’ in the age of social media,” he continues. “In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna provides a terrific example of friendship in his relationship to Arjuna who was an anxious soldier on the battlefield. His position was not to condescend to him but to give him encouragement by allowing him to view the battle from a different paradigm.” Winkowski hasn’t abandoned his belief in the power of music. “Music and spirituality are inseparable. I see it as a singular force that can unite the world, versus a political ideology that can only take us so far.”
